A
New Strategy and the Old Land: The Impact of China’s Regional Development
Policies on a Drokba Community in Tibet

Liu Yimin

Pastoral nomads, who graze their
herds over the Tibetan plateau, call themselves Drokba. Their chief contribution
to the economy of Tibet
is their cultivation of yak, sheep and goats. People need their products, and
the government would like to increase pastoral output, since wool, cashmere,
and skins are among the main economic products of Tibet.

Important social
and economic reforms have taken place in China
since 1978. With these in effect, the central government has come to adopt a
radically different regional development strategy from the Maoist era. The net
effect of the new strategy has been revitalizing, with increased economic
development since 1981 despite potential problems.

This paper
provides a description and interpretation of the impact of China's
regional development policies on Doma, a Drokba community in the northern Tibetan plateau. In doing
so, I take into account the economic structure and living conditions in the
explanatory context of the Drokba's particular
historical situation. At the center of this account, I present the original
field research data collected in Doma in 1987.
Traditional ethnographic methods were utilized, including
participant-observation and in-depth interviewing. Using my own, my research
partner's work, along with other sources, I have included data which are-
insofar as possible- accurate representations of the real situation. These data
are considered in the context of both an ecological and a wider institutional
framework. The institutional framework combines both Drokba
traditional systems and the administrative institution of the Chinese state.
This account is then interpreted in the context of recent and continuing
institutional and economic changes. Finally, it is rounded off by a practical
discussion and analysis of the implications of research on the theory of
polarized development, as has been put forward by John Friedman. Before an
interpretation and practical discussion are presented, I give a brief review of
post-Mao regional development policy and other rural-economic policies
affecting the current situation in Doma.

China’s new development strategy

In the early 1950s, when the
Chinese communist leadership initiated efforts towards economic reconstruction,
it regarded the huge coast-interior imbalance as irrational for three reasons.
First, areas of industrial production on the coast were too far away from
energy and raw material supply areas and the interior market. Secondly, the
rich resources of the inland areas could not be properly exploited. Thirdly,
the coast was easily exposed to foreign military powers (Yu Di,
1983). To rectify the regional imbalance, the central government decided to
take an interior-oriented investment policy. These redistributive investment
efforts are reflected in provincial output changes from the 1950s to the late
1970s.[1]

Post-Mao
government policies have favored the coastal region over the interior. The
government sees developing the coastal region as being in the national interest
and believes coastal development will serve as a catalyst in the modernization
of the entire country.

The
new strategy assigned each region a special role. Current governmental policy
regarding the poorer areas has been oriented towards the pragmatic objective of
enabling the poor to feed themselves. "Backward" regions, including Tibet
and the other western provinces, are expected to exploit their strengths by
developing agriculture, livestock industry, forestry, etc. Therefore, they
should initiate development by providing raw materials, while gradually
advancing toward rough processing. In the western region, agriculture, animal
husbandry and transport are being emphasized.

In
1979, after thirty years following a system of state monopoly for purchasing
and marketing agricultural products, the central government began to readjust
its agriculture and animal husbandry policies by raising the prices of many products
and encouraging free markets. Between 1979 and 1985, the average sale price of
the main agricultural and livestock products rose 25 to 85% or more. Much of
the extra money from the rise in prices has gone to Tibetan pastoral nomads,
with their large livestock herds.

The
transformation of the Tibetan economy

Before 1959, the traditional
economy of Tibet
was in a very primitive state of development owing to its severe climate, poor
education and a skeletal bureaucratic administration. The economy was based on
agriculture and livestock. Most of the people are still engaged in these two
occupations.

Prior
to 1959, agriculture was only at subsistence level owing to the brief duration
of the summer season and poor irrigation facilities and other factors,
including the lack of modern tools. The main crops of Tibet
are barley and peas in high altitudes, but in lower altitudes, especially in
the valleys, wheat, buckwheat and millet are grown. The Brahmaputra basin in south-middle Tibet
is called the “granary of Tibet”
as it produces food for about 60% of the population.

Besides
agriculture, livestock farming is the other main occupation of Tibetans. The
yak is the most important animal in Tibet
by providing milk, meat, butter, cheese, etc. Sheep are raised mainly for their
meat and wool, which is the main item of export. In the early 1950s, the major
problem Lhasa and Beijing
had to face was the American boycott of Tibetan wool, resulting from a United
States policy forbidding trade with any
communist nation. Beijing's
response was to purchase Tibet's
entire wool production at three times the market price. This was part of their
policy aimed at winning the support of the Tibetan people, both the nomads
responsible for raising the sheep and the nobility who profited from the sale.

The
traditional economy of Tibet
was composed of two major sectors. The first included large estates, owned by
the monasteries and the nobility who exercised extensive rights and special
privileges over the inhabitants in matters such as collection of taxes,
justice, and administration. The second sector comprised a network of peasant
land holdings. In this land, and livestock were granted to households directly
by the state for production and services directed for the state. The two
district governors[2] in each
of the districts in Tibet
were responsible for the management and collection of revenues from government
estates. Under this economic system, most of the Drokba
in Doma owned their own animals and paid taxes and
services to Tibet's
government.

In 1951, the
agreement for the "peaceful liberation" of Tibet
was signed by the then government of Tibet
and the central government of China.
The agreement, in addition to its emphasis on expelling Western influences from
Tibet, stressed
the adoption of various reforms and autonomous rights for minority-nationality
areas. Yet, in consideration of Tibet's
specific situation, the central government delayed reforms in Tibet
and allowed the traditional administration to continue. In march 1959 an armed
rebellion broke the agreement. The central government of China
at once quashed the rebellion and abolished the traditional administration. At
the same time, a massive "democratic reform movement" was instituted.
The government reported that 93% of the 59 townships were communized by 1975
following a succession of such economic and politico-legal reforms (Grunfeld, 1987).

The
death of Mao heralded some of the most significant changes in China
since 1949. But, the full impact of these changes reached Tibet
only after the post-Mao Chinese leadership began to readjust China's
regional development policy in the late 1970s and the early 1980s.

Since
1979, the central government has gradually but steadily reversed the Maoist
model and come to adopt a new development strategy. In 1980, a high-level
delegation from Beijing arrived in Lhasa
on an inspection tour of Tibet.
After the trip, the delegation admitted errors in past policies, and made a
surprisingly frank report on Tibet
which stated the following. First, the government had invested excessive
capital without regard to actual situations or the availability of supplies,
leading to poor results and heavy losses. Second, living standards in Tibet
lagged far behind the other provinces and autonomous regions of the country.
This meant a redirection in policy to lighten the burdens on ordinary citizens.
Therefore, it was decided that the people in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR)
be exempt from paying taxes and meeting purchase quotas for the next few years.
It was also decided that they should not be assigned any additional work
without pay, and that peasants' and herdsmen's produce should be purchased at
negotiated prices or bartered to supply mutual needs. Finally, specific and
flexible policies suited to conditions in Tibet
had to be formulated and applied to all economic fronts of the region,
including the agricultural, animal husbandry, financial and trade, commercial,
handicraft and communication fronts.

“In
the early 1980s, communes were disbanded completely, and land was allocated to
individual households to do with as they wished. There was no mention in the
press of the ‘responsibility system’ prevalent in the rest of China
where individual households needed to sign contracts to deliver a percentage of
their output to the government in return for the use of the land. Taxes were
waived until at least 1990, free markets were established, trade with
neighboring countries was liberalized and encouraged,”[3] As
part of a long term policy, the state now allows farmers to use land and manage
their own production, and allows herders to own, raise and manage livestock. At
the same time, the government has changed its investment policy in Tibet.
Transportation, energy and tourism instead of local industries have become the
key target of new investment from the central and local governments. The
central government invested more than 700 million RMB to asphalt and widen the
Qinghai-Tibet highway in 1984. This new black-topped road changed Doma.

Doma:
A Drokba community in northern Tibet

Doma is a
local level administrative unit (Known as Xiang) in
the Doma District (Qu), Amdo county (Xian), Naquk
prefecture (Zhuanqqu), Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR).
It is located in the central section of the Northern Plateau, which is situated
at altitudes ranging from 4,780-5,230m. Doma is
located 370km north of Lhasa and
60km west of the Qinghai-Tibet road.

The
nomads in the Northern Plateau experience one of the most severe climates in
the world. Winter lows range from minus 20-50 degrees F, and mid-summer lows
are around freezing. Winter winds are fierce, and very strong throughout the
rest of year except the growing season. Precipitation is monsoonal, falling
mostly during June, July, and August, often in the form of snow and hail
storms. In general, there is very little snow in the winter, although late fall
and spring snows are greatly feared. The single growing season in the Northern
Plateau begins in late April-early May and ends in September. Even during this period,
snow, hail storms and evening frosts are common. Since no pasture areas in Tibet
have a winter growing season, and because there is inadequate grass to cut as
fodder to supplement winter grazing, the nomads' animals subsist for about
eight months on the senescent vegetation remaining at the end of the growing
season. These factors- the short growing season, the intense could, and the
frequent and fierce summer hail storms and frosts- combine to make farming a
non-viable alternative to pastoralism and preclude competition from farmers for
the use of the grasslands.

In
1987, Doma contained 98 households and 502 persons
divided among 14 home-base settlements (guoxie,
which means group, or neighborhood). Such a settlement consists of between 6 to
7 households or tents. Generally, there are two sets of correlated ordering
principles of settlement: kinship, social structure and affinity; and location.

Tents
are made of yak hair cloth, loosely woven in narrow strips and sewn together.
In shape the tent is rectangular, often some twelve feet in length. It is
supported on two poles tied to pegs or heavy stones in the ground with yak hair
ropes. An aperture, about two feet long in the middle of the roof, lets out the
smoke (or at least some of it). These tents are waterproof and impervious to
snow. In the center of tent, or near the entrance, is a stove made of stone and
mud. Recently some households have started to use iron stoves. Dung is used as
fuel, for most Tibetan herdsmen usually live above the elevations at which
trees can grow. Typically, inside the tent there are cooking utensils, buckets
and churns, rugs, saddles, and cloth bags containing food. Most nomads have few
belongings and lead a very hard life. An ordinary tent affords a home to five
or six persons, but many are fuller. The nomads raise yak, sheep, goats and
horses, and do not engage in any farming. 23% of their livestock are yak, and
70% are sheep and goats in Domw.

Before
1959, the nomads of Doma were directly controlled by
the government of Tibet.
Each household owned and managed its own livestock. Their economic obligation
to the government consisted of several kinds of taxes. Examples of taxes paid
yearly to the government included a wool tax, a salt tax, a prayer tax (butter,
meat, and woolen cloth for monks), a livestock tax (butter, skin or money), a corvee tax, and a military tax (wages and supplies for
soldiers).

Beginning
in 1959, the central government had adopted a policy to bring Tibet
into the "socialist way" gradually. In accordance with this policy,
all Doma households kept the animals and pastures
they held and managed their herds as they had in the past. Debts dating from
before 1959 were rescinded and those contracted in 1959 were recalculated with
reduced interest. In early 1961, the relatively mild policy called "mutual
aid" was implemented in Doma. Most households
were formed into mutual aid groups consisting of several households that
jointly held pastures and cooperated in tasks such as herding. Economic
decisions, however, remained the prerogative of individual households, and
income was received individually.

During
the "Cultural Revolution" (1966-1976) Doma
became one production brigade. The nomads became "owners" of shares
in the brigade, but in reality were simply laborers who worked according to the
brigade leader's orders. The pastoral technology remained basically the same,
but social and political organization were restructured by transferring
ownership of the means of production and all production and trade decisions
from the household to the brigade. However, full-scale pastoralists'
traditional culture also came under severe attack. The government's overt
policy during this period was to maintain pastoral production but to destroy
the social and cultural fabric of the nomads' traditional way of life
(Goldstein and Beall, 1989).

With
the reform beginning in the late 1970s, China's
policies in Tibet
dramatically changed the system of production and improved the overall standard
of living. As in the rest of China,
the major economic reform program in Tibet
is known as the system of "responsibility". It began at Doma in the Fall 1981 when the communal brigade was
dissolved and all of the brigade's animals were distributed evenly among the
nomads. Then, each household became completely responsible for its own
production and marketing, as in the pre-1959 era.

The traditional system of
pastoral production

Pastoralism is a subsistence
strategy. The pastoralism of Tibet
is not like the commercial ranching of developed countries in which grain
production is linked to livestock production. There is no production of crops
mainly for animal feed. At least in the Northern Plateau, pastoralism is still
primarily traditional and based on open grazing on the extensive grasslands.

At
Doma, animal husbandry is based on effectively
exploiting the single, short growing season.[4]Doma nomads prolong
their herds' access to good quality pasture by moving themselves and their
livestock annually between at least two or three encampments. In general, they
move from a winter-spring season home-base encampment to summer encampment for
the several months between mid-late May and mid-late October. The nomads reason
that on an individual household basis, increasing herd size during good years
provides necessary insurance against the inevitable bad years when heavy snow
or drought decimates their herds by making them more susceptible to disease and
winter cold. Pastoralism, here as else where, is a risky undertaking.

Daily management tends toward efficiency of allocation of
labor, and during the daylight hours the nomads prefer to keep animals
clustered in flocks or sub-flocks within the larger groups. These herd
management groups generally include 15 to 25 yak and 70 to 130 sheep and goats.
One or two persons, usually young men, can supervise such groups, which are
relatively easy to direct for pasture and water.

There
is usually a division of labor by gender. Milking is carried out by women and
livestock trade by the men. General supervision can be carried out by both.
Sometimes sheep and goats are looked after separately by youths and women;
these animals are divided into male and female groups to reduce fighting among
males. Watering is normally carried out directly in small rivulets in the
pastures.

A
unique feature of the traditional(pre-1959) pastoral system that is no longer being practiced is the
complex administrative system of pasture allocation and reallocation. The then
government of Tibet
owned all pastureland and allocated plots to individual households who then had
exclusive usufruct right over them for a given period of time. The nomads owned
their livestock. These pastures were not fenced, but boundaries were enforced
by the government. Nomads’ households could use only their assigned pastures.
Nowadays, in practice the nomads follow the traditional pattern of neighborhood
allocation of pasture and boundaries although the central government owns all
pasturewhich the nomads use. Within Drokba, community use rights fall to each household
according partly to traditional, and partly according to an egalitarian,
rotation.

Transformation of the pastoral
economy

The New Transportation Network

For centuries, all transportation
in Tibet was by
porters and pack animals. In 1950 there was no other independent country of
comparable size in the world where no wheeled vehicles were used (Kavan, 1978). Traditionally, the nomads in Doma made a winter trading trip to agricultural areas in
the southeast which took 30-40 days of walking.

The
central government of China
introduced modern transportation on vehicular highways, although they were
built primarily with political goals rather than commercial intentions. The
central government embarked upon a program of road building in the early 1950s.
After implementation of the new development policy, the central government
invested more money in road construction in Tibet.
"Fascinating" Tibet
is no longer beyond reach. With a total mileage of 21,695 kilometers, a
complete transportation network has been formed (Cai,
1990). Except for Medog county[5] in
southern Tibet,
the highway system reaches all 76 counties under the jurisdiction of the Tibet
Autonomous Region (TAR)[6].
With Lhasa as the center, and the Qinghai-Tibet, Sichuang-Tibet
and Sino-Nepal highway as arteries, and coupled with flights linking Lhasa to
Beijing, Lanzhou, Chengdu,
and Katmandu, tourists, pilgrims, and businessmen can reach Tibet in a matter
of hours.

For
the nomads in Doma, the Qinghai-Tibet highway is
extremely important for their social and economic life. The highway,
originating in Xining,
the capital of Qinghai province,
and ending in Lhasa, runs past salt
lakes and crosses eight mountains, including peaks in the Kulun
and Tunggula- ranges that are 4,767 and 5,231 meters
above sea level- for a total distance of 1,937 kilometers. The Qinghai-Tibet
highway was completed and opened to traffic in 1954.Wider and smoother than
other highways leading to Tibet,
it is the most important transportation artery linking Tibet
and inner China.
Since its completion, it has been carrying 85% of the goods entering the region
and 90% of those going out. But, since the 1960s, the condition of the roads
has deteriorated. In the 1970s, the nomads in Doma
had to spend 5 to 7 days to get to Lhasa
by this road, even by truck. In the early 1980s, the central government
invested 760 million RMB yuan in a complete overhaul
of the highway during 1983 and 1984. The highway was widened and paved with
asphalt. It now enables the nomads to get to Lhasa
or Xining
within 15-20 hours by Japanese-made trucks or buses.[7]
The nomads' salt and grain caravans stopped when good black-topped roads and
new foreign trucks were introduced.

As
a signal of the nomads' new era, a "truckable"
road from Amdo county to Doma
was constructed in the mid 1980s. In the summer of 1986, seven households at Doma joined together to buy an old Chinese truck. This is a
new common property resource in the pastoral area.

Since
1986 a ground satellite communications station has been set up in Amdo county. The people living in and near the county town
have been able to watch Lhasa and Beijing
television programs on the same day they are broadcast. In the early 1980s Doma became accessible to postal communications. Now
anybody in the county can send telegrams to other places in Tibet
and China. For
the convenience of Tibetans the post and telecommunications department of TAR
has designed a Tibetan telegraphic code. Just a few nomads in Doma make long-distance telephone calls. For most ordinary
Tibetans making a long-distance telephone call is still very difficult, even in
Lhasa.[8]

Reorientation of Trade

In its purest form, pastoralism is
an economic system in which all food for the household is produced from
domestic herds. But few pastoralists depend solely on their livestock. They
supplement milk and meat from their domestic herds with grain consumption. The
degree of dependence on farm products varies as do ways for obtaining them,
either directly through farming pursuits or indirectly through trade. Even the Maasai in Kenya
and Tanzania,
people that have been used as examples of pure pastoralism, rely to a
considerable extent on farm products. The Doma
pastoral production system involves rearing yak, sheep and goats, harvesting
their products, consuming part of the yield, and then bartering with another
portion to obtain necessities such as barley and tea.

(1) Barter of grain, salt and livestock
products

An economy based on livestock
products is very efficient in fulfilling human requirements for protein.
According to the nomads' standard, a herd of 50 sheep or 6-7 yak would be
enough to meet the protein needs of an adult (Geleg,
Zhang, Ang, and Liu, 1988). It takes a considerably
larger number to meet caloric needs, a fact that suggests the rationality of
adding grain to the diet. In Doma, grain is a
seasonal replacement for milk and meat, but also a regular supplement and
ultimate reserve for bad years. Because roughly 40%-60% of these nomads' annual
calories derive from barley and other grains, trade for grain has always been
anintegral component of their
subsistence economy.

Grain
and other crops are grown mainly in south eastern Tibet
which has higher population densities and a lower altitude, on average, than
the northwest. Much of the surplus grown in the southeast has been
traditionally exchanged for pastoral products and salt for human consumption
from the northwest. Traditional exchanges in Tibet
occurred between areas with different ecologies and different local products.
Each area balanced its needs with the surplus of another. The one important
ecological factor that gives rise to this particular pattern is topography: the
country rises from southeast to northwest with an average altitude in Tibet
of over 4,000 meters; these high altitudes are associated with climatic
extremes of heat and cold, dryness and wetness, and winds (Clarke, 1988).

Historically, Tibetan nomads were the primary producers
of salt for Tibet, and Nepalese hill areas
and, in the past, parts of northern India. Each spring, some of the Doma nomads took pack animals (sheep, goats, or yak) to a
"caka" (saline lake) about 15-16 days to
the west to collect salt from large exposed salt beds. Some of this went to pay
a salt tax to the Tibet government, while the
excess was bartered with villagers. The nomads traditionally made a winter
trading trip to southern areas for 30-50 days; farmer-traders came to the
northern areas during the summer months to barter with the nomads. Even into
the early 1980s a few of the nomads in Doma carried
out long distance trade in order to obtain grain and deliver salt. It would be
normal for a group of men and load-carrying yak from Doma
to be away for months at a time carrying these goods from one area to another.
Nomads used to have traditional exchange partners in the villages. Such
relationships often persisted between the households over a number of
generations.

(2) Wool and cashmere trade

Wool has been the most important
trade item for the nomads in Doma. Wool from Doma and Amdo areas has had a
commercial reputation for a long time. Before 1959, a profitable India
wool trade resulted in the development of a wealthy Tibetan trading class in Napuk. They mainly exported wool to India,
and imported a wide variety of merchandise from India,
such as rice, dye materials, ironware, sugar, tea, cloth, and rifles.

Cashmere,
the soft down of goats, was of little value to the traditional nomads economy
in Doma but has risen dramatically in value over the
past few years, and in 1987, sold for between 7-8 times the price of wool sold
at the government rates.

(3) Butter and beef market

Both traditional and more recent
taxation have been in butter and beef. Milk is processed into butter.[9] In
Doma, roughly 70%-80% of total milk production is
consumed locally; only 20%-30% is traded. The general absence of a large
surplus of butter for trade was noted everywhere in Tibet.
In recent years, Tibetans living in Lhasa
and Naquk (the central town of northern Tibet)
have bought butter produced in Beijing.

According
to our empirical investigation of milk production in Doma,
one explanation for low milk and butter production is that herd husbandry is
oriented towards beef rather than butter production. Why has the demand for
beef risen? So far, at least two things are clear. As incomes in the nation,
especially in urban areas, go up, the demand for beef will rise. From
1980-1984, the numbers of employees who work for government agencies at
different levels in Tibet
increased by 65%. At the same time, the average wages of these employees
doubled. For the nomads, raising a beef herd means raising more males, as they
are bigger and fetch more money on the market than females.

At
present, there are three important types of trade at Doma.
We can speak of trade with the government, at the district and county levels;
and trade with people from the cities, like Naquk, Lhasa,
and even some of China's
coastal cities like Shanghai; and
trade with Tibetan farmers who come to the north in summer to exchange
agricultural products and labor for livestock or livestock products.

There
are four principal differences between traditional trade within Tibet
and the modern trade in livestock and associated products. First, the
government plays a major role in trade nowadays, extending to the creation of
monopolies (at least potentially) in the distribution of benefits. Second, due
to the transport network, less time is required for travel and more in
negotiations at one's destination. Third, trading focusses
more on the cities, even coastal industrial cities. Finally, a transaction now
is more the sale of a commodity. That is, it involves a market relation with a
cash nexus and the aim of maximization, rather than the traditional exchange
which was expressive of, and reinforced, continuing relationships between
households.

The
new development policy gives nomads and farmers the right to sell their
products to whomever they want, but the bulk of the nomads' wool and cashmere
trade is conducted with the district's trade office through a system of
contract or quota sales. The reason for this is simple: the nomads are being
asked by local (district and county) officials to sell a quota to the
government, and there are strong pressures to meet such requests. Such trade is
carried on as follows. The Naquk prefecture’s trade
office makes a contract with the county's trade office to buy a specific
quantity of livestock products, according to the number of head of livestock in
each of its districts. The district calculates the amount of wool and cashmere
which each nomads' group must provide to the government, based on the number of
livestock in each. The district administrators inform each household what it
has to provide. In general, a variety of threats and sanctions are employed to
compel the nomads to sell this quota to the government before they sell
anything on the open market.

In
1986, the county trade office paid the nomads 2.5-3 yuan
or 6 jin of grain per jin
of wool and then sold it to the prefecture for 4 yuan,[10] making
a profit of more than 30%. They paid the nomads 12 yuan
per jin for
cashmere, and sold it to Naquk for 19 yuan per jin. The gross
profit is actually larger than this because many nomads take grain rather than
money and the county obtains grain for 0.6-0.4 yuan
less than it charges the nomads. One jinof goat
cashmere sold in 1986 for 45-48 yuan per jin in Guangzhou,
the Great Commercial city on the southern coast of China.

Wool
is said to have been sold in 1986 to Shanghai
and Guangzhou for 2.00-3.00 yuan per kilogram. The wool price for export sales to Nepal
in 1986 was said to be 3.00-3.50 yuan per kilogram
delivered to the Nepalese border. Wool and cashmere also bring high prices on
the free market. In Lhasa, for
example, 0.5 kilogram of wool fetched about 4-5 yuan
in 1986. In the winter of 1986, two Doma nomads who
went to Lhasa in the truck they had
bought for business bartered their surplus wool for 8.50 kilograms of barley
per kilogram of wool. Similarly, private traders from Sichuang
who came to Doma in the summer of 1986 were offering
70-80 yuan per kilogram of cashmere. But such deals
are against the regulations of the local government of Tibet.

The
economic exploitation of the nomads is also occurring at the district level.[11]
The nomads are compelled to sell butter and sheep to district oficials for the officials’ own consumption needs. In Doma, we saw the nomads sell sheep for 28 yuan each to district official. But, at the same place and
almost same time, the nomads were selling sheep at 50-55 yuan
each to outsiders. In Lhasa they
could sell sheep for 60-70 yuan each. In Doma, the system works not by an open market economy, but
by establishing a "quota" at prices below the market value. The
officials decide how much butter and meat they need and then establish a per
animal quota which will yield this.

Since
wool was traditionally Tibet's
main export item, the nomads have always been part of a larger market system.
However, their dependence on distant China
and world markets has increased since the early 1980s. The construction of
truck roads from the county to the district in the mid 1980s has played an
important role in fostering this increasing entanglement. In recent years, the
government can easily bring grain and other commodities to district
headquarters. The new Qinghai-Tibet highway made truck transport even more
convenient. The highway and other roads not only have allowed the government to
keep the districts well stocked with grains and other essential trade goods,
but have facilitated visits by Lhasa based traders seeking cashmere, skins and
furs, as well as offering nomads the possibility of trading directly with new
markets such as the city of Naquk which is just 4
hours away by truck. The general trend is for farm surplus, previously bartered
with pastoralists, to now be sold on the national market. Farm products' prices
have been subject to great inflation.[12]

For
the nomads in Doma, regional integration into these
markets has caused both an increased emphasis on cash and a shift in local
trade from barter to cash exchange. Since 1980 the building of infrastructures
in communication and transport stands as the main positive achievement. More
recently there appears to have been an influx of goods, ideas and people on a
scale that has materially altered life. These have accompanied the recent
administrative movements towards deregulation and a cash economy that are
similar to those in inner China.

Livestock management

The different orientation of
production leads to a different set of management strategies by herders. If the
goal is to maximize milk or meat production for sale, the objective is to have
a herding operation that will give the best returns with a minimum investment
of labor (Moran, 1982). Daily management tends towards efficiently of
allocating labor, and during daylight hours people prefer to keep animals
clustered in flocks within larger groups. In Doma,
such management groups are 15-20 for yak, and 70-130 for sheep and goats.

The
expanding monetary economy is felt not only in changes in the local
availability, or price level, of grain but also through changed facilities for
the marketing of livestock. Tibetan pastoralists have a reputation for being
reluctant to sell their animals. Livestock have served as an investment in many
places in the world. In Tibet,
there is a traditional attitude that the pure accumulation of livestock itself
is of value, and expression of well-being and prosperity, a form of wealth. In Doma, an old man told me: "Look, my herd is my bank, which
can be hung on my tent." This is borne out in popular speech among
pastoralists on the Northern Plateau. Cash is seen by them as another item or
good, rather than as a baseline medium of exchange and store of value (Clarke,
1988). There is cultural resistance to the slaughtering of livestock, with
strong Buddhist prohibitions against killing.[13]
Traditionally, the pastoralists often did not cull the herd early in the season
when the price is high, but held on until much later, perhaps coming near to
degradation of the pasture. Only at the end, when the price has fallen in
winter did they slaughter the animals.

The
market-pricing process makes people more aware of the possibilities inherent in
slaughtering livestock earlier in the season. In effect, pastoralists now own
the livestock themselves, and in areas near urban areas there clearly has
developed an open market in livestock. Beyond the livestock, which is
contracted to the state, surplus livestock can be sold in these markets for
cash, and this has begun to alter people's attitudes towards breeding for
market.

The Household Economy

In the summer 1987, Doma contained 98 household and 502 persons. In Doma, most nomads live in smaller, nuclear family
households, of over five members, on average. At the beginning of decollectivisation (1981), all households had the
opportunity to "shake off poverty". The nomads were free sell or
barter their animals as they saw fit; all the animals of the brigade were
divided equally among the nomads regardless of their class, background, or age.
Each Doma adult or child received 48 head of
livestock. In addition, households were allowed to retain the
"private" animals they held during the commune era. This raised the
average to 51 animals per person.

In 1987, six years
after the division following decollectivisation,
economic differentiation has reemerged in Doma.
Again, there are now both wealthy and poor nomads. As a result of this process
of economic differentiation, the richer 24% of households in 1987 owned 44.5%
of the animals. There was an increasing concentration of animals in the hands
of the upper 24% of the households and the emergence once again of a lower
stratum of households with few animals. Several cases of how rich and poor
households managed their household economics can illustrate their very
different strategies for survival.

Case
One

This household is a typical
"nuclear" family in Doma. It is made up of
a man (39 years old), his wife (36) and their three children (16, 14 and 9). In
1981, they had in all 63 yak, 118 sheep, 67 goats and 2 horses. In 1987, the
family had 82 yak, 205 sheep, 5 horses and 41 goats. Since the distribution of
the collective property to individuals, there has been an increase in value, or
effective size, of the family herd of over one-third. This is not from purchase
or re-allocation, but from natural increase, locally estimated at 25% per
annum, minus the number sold for slaughter over the period. At 1987 Naquk sale prices these animals would have a value of
around 48,000 RMB yuan,[14]
that is 9,700 yuan per capita. The value of livestock
for this household is more than the average for this nomadic community.

Case
Two

This household is relatively
wealthy in Doma. It contains 8 members: husband (53),
the first wife (49), the second wife (42, sister of the first wife), the wives'
mother, two daughters (22, 20), a son (11), and an adopted son (19). We can
find strong support for the relationship between family size and wealth in this
case. This husband said: "I want as many children as come…if somebody
dies, we should make sure there are more." When he had had two daughters,
he wanted a son, so he adopted a child from a relative.

In
the summer of 1987 this household owned 812 animals (137 yak, 298 sheep, 9
houses and 368 goats) more than 101 animals per person. The market value of
these animals (1987) was about 121,000 RMB yuan
(US$24,200). This household slaughtered 3 yak, and 80 sheep and goats for meat
in 1986. In this year, the household sold 154 kilograms of wool at 3.5 yuan per kilogram, 25 kilograms of cashmere at 14 yuan per kilogram, 15 sheep at 30 yuan
and 2 yak at 465 yuan to the local government. At the
same time, this household sold 30 kilograms of cashmere at 18.5 yuan per kilogram to businessmen from Guangzhou,
and sold 4 yak (as meat) at the Naquk free market for
2,200 yuan (total).

In
the summer of 1987, the household hired a man from another nomad community and
a woman from a southern village. In 1986, the family paid 12 sheep, and 370 yuan as wages. The husband said he would like to sell more
beef in Naquk and Lhasa.[15]
The husband is an indicator of the production plans of the family. A beef herd
has more males, as these are bigger and fetch more money on the market than
females. The main purpose of the females in a beef herd is reproduce the male
beef stock. But for a traditional herd from Doma it
is said that the males would be used only for trading and carrying the tents;
in which case there would be an excess of females over males and the herd would
often be oriented towards milk product production. In this case-study household
there are 98 male and 39 female; this suggests a beef rather than milk herd. In
fact, the household sold 9 female yak to other households in 1986. In this case
the ages of male yak were reported as 5.2 years. In general, males are said to
be full grown at around their sixth year. So, unless the costs of feed outweigh
the benefits, there would be no point in slaughtering before that age. Quite
obviously there is some economic incentive to raise beef for market.

The
householder regards his livestock as mainly an item for trade, not for dairy
products. He said that he was planning to sell wool, cashmere or other
livestock products in border trade with Nepal,[16]
but he did not how to do that yet. His father did business over the Himalayas
before 1959. His eldest brother is in India.
This family, together with six others from this neighborhood group, have bought
a used truck. But his son was full of complaints about the difficulty of getting
gasoline,[17] parts,
and permission for dealing in some goods, like cashmere and grain in the long
distance trade.

In
1986, the household had to purchase barley, wheat, rice, and cooking oil. The
household consumes 90 kilograms of grain per month, which they obtain from the Doma district office and the free market, sometimes paying
with cash and sometimes in butter, beef and wool. He makes cash purchases of
tea (from Sichuang), cigarettes (made in coastal
cities like Shanghai, Guangzhou
and Beijing) and cloth (also from
coastal cities, for example, there is a factory which has only made
"Tibetan style" felt hats for Tibetans since the 1960s in a
coastal-industrial city). He also bought traditional and new luxury goods such
as silk, necklaces, rug, otter skins (originating in Northern
America), watches (produced in Hong Kong),
a lighter (from Taiwan),
binoculars and a cassette tape/radio player (parts from Japan,
assembled in Guangzhou).

Case
Three

This household, by contrast, is one
of the poorest in Doma. The household contains 4
persons: the father, who has a drinking problem (58), his daughter (32) and her
two illegitimate children.[18]
In the summer of 1986 this family owned only 2 yak, 20 sheep and 13 goats. In
that fall, the district office gave this household four female yak to help them
develop their own herd. But, by the winter, they had slaughtered two of these
yak for meat and sold one for cash. The household also bartered two sheep and
one goat with farmer-traders from the south for 110 kilograms of barley flour.
In 1987, this woman spun 25 kilograms of yak hair for her relative and received
2 kilograms of butter, 5 kilograms of beef and 2 sheep as wages. Her son, 14
years old, worked 4 months as a herder for a household simply for better food and
one sheep as salary.

Case
Four

This household is not as poor as
the household in case three, but has been a loser in the economic
transformation. The household has 5 members: a man (29), his brother
(unmarried, 21), his mother (48), his wife (23), and a male child (2). In 1984,
this household still owned 317 animals. In the winter of 1985, these two
brothers took the traditional two-months trading trip with their carrying
animals (yak) to barter salt in farm areas. But in the southern villages, they found
the market was changing: the price of grain rose, due to the government's new
price policy and a bad harvest, while the price of salt fell (salt from Qinghai
and Sichuang was cheap). The brothers earned less
from the sale of their salt than they had ever made previously. On the way back
home, they had to sell their animals for cash. After their return, the brothers
sold almost half of their animals, and took a loan of 7,000 yuan.[19]
They opened a teahouse in the Amdo county town. The
teahouse closed after it operated for four months. There were three reasons:
first, they put too much butter and sugar in the tea; second, they always
served free tea to their friends and relatives; third, a Chinese from Sichuang opened a restaurant and teahouse next door. In the
cold spring of 1987, the household received 250 kilograms of barley as welfare
from the local government. Their herd was reduced to 185 in the summer of 1987.
The younger brother had to work for three months as a herder for a household in
another encampment.

Now,
members for the poorer households must work for wages and accept welfare from
the government. The rich households on the other hand, as they did before the
mid-1960s, hire poor nomads to do many of the difficult jobs. The poor nomads
see this change as a part of the traditional way of things, and the rich
generally treat their poor fellows quite kindly. The nomads said "This is
our Drokba way."

Discussion

The economic transformation that
occurred in the pastoral areas of northern Tibet have come about at least in
part because of the same material and ideological forces that have had their
impact over all of China since the new, regional development policies have been
implemented.

In
the Tibet Autonomous Region during the 1980's the main achievement was the
development of an infrastructure for communication and transport. The economic
reform also presented the possibility that the introduction of commercial
marketing would promote the development of a vertical structure, with trade
centered in urban centers in either the Tibet Autonomous Region or inner China.
These may become a further focus for the reorientation of traditional Drokba trade patterns and development of differentials
between the Tibet Autonomous Region and inner China.

As
China's modern
history has shown, the central government's economic development policies are
politically motivated. While the Maoist development strategy was heavily
redistributive and interior-oriented, China's
new development strategy enables the coastal regions to derive more benefits
than other regions.

The
post-Mao regional development policy cannot guarantee a harmony of interests
among the regions. The policy is one which concentrates on developing the
coastal regions rather than the interior. Transmission of development from
region to region is not automatic. The implications of this thesis are pointed
out most forcefully by John Friedman in his, A General Theory of Polarized
Development. He argues that development is a process of innovation which aims
"to transform the established structure of society by attracting creative
or innovative personalities into the enclaves of accelerated change; by
encouraging the formation of new values, attitudes, and behavior traits
consistent with the innovation; by fomenting a social environment favorable to
innovative activity; and by bringing into existence yet further
innovations" (82).

According
to Friedman, conditions that are especially favorable to innovation are
generally found in large and rapidly growing urban systems. Moreover,
successful innovation tends to increase the potential power of innovators. As a
result, the centers of innovation tend to penetrate and dominate the periphery
through trade, transport networks, new communication systems, and production
and market relations. In the meantime, new desires and frustrations will grow
in the peripheral areas and give rise to demands for autonomy, or even
political conflict with the core.

China's
new development policies implemented in Tibet
have produced a major economic transformation in Northern Tibet.
The policies have proceeded to change the local economic system and have led to
increasing involvement in cash-oriented productive patterns and to dramatic
social and economic differentiation.

This
general integration of pastoralism into a market economy, together with new
development policies, has brought some new, even more serious problems for more
equitable and stable long-term development.

[1]Tibet's
modern industrial development began in the late 1950s with a concentration of
manufacturing plants in central Tibet,
where transportation and communications systems were better. In march 1959 a
blast furnace with a capacity of one and one-half tones of pig iron, for
processing local ore and coal, was erected at Lhasa.
An ordnance factory began producing ammunition in 1964 at a site about two
miles east of Lhasa. Linchih, a city in central-southern Tibet,
is a new center of industrial activity developed since the Cultural Revolution.
The technical personnel and workers for this industrial center were sent from Shanghai
and other coastal cities in China.
The Shanghai Weilun Woolen Textile Mile moved to Tibet
and set up the region's largest plant in Linchih,
employing more than 3,000 workers. It produces fifty types of wool fabrics,
including blankets. Its raw material comes mostly from the Northern Plateau.

[4] At
Doma, green foliage first appears in late April or
early May on the spring-fed wet meadows and river banks that cover just a small
part of the summer grazing area. The bulk of the land is covered by plant
communities that depend on monsoonal precipitation and these begin to play a
role in livestock forage selection in late May or early June. Foliage is
sufficient to wean newborn lambs and kids and begin milking only in mid-June.
The growing season ends in September.

[6] The
TAR corresponds closely to political Tibet,
the area traditionally ruled by the Tibet
government in the 1930s and 1940s.

[7] Japanese
vehicles started to be imported in the late 1970s and appeared on the plateau
in the middle 1980s.

[8] In
Lhasa, just few people have private
phones. In Doma, no one does.

[9] In
Doma butter is still made in a very primitive way by
some nomads. Milk is poured into a yak skin slung supported by two posts. After
a few hours the butter is found floating and buttermilk is separated and used
in other ways. In the Northern Plateau, butter can be stored for several months
without getting rancid.

[11] Actually,
people might note that this is unofficial, as people are not obliged to sell to
the government by law.

[12] Grain
increased from 0.40 per kilogram in 1983 to 1.00-1.20 in 1987. Tea increased
from 1.75 to 1.90 yuan per brick in 1986.

[13] In
traditional Tibet,
the butcher's trade was hated by Tibetans and all butchers were outcasts.
Today, the profession is still hereditary and is one of the lowest in Tibet.
The killing of animals is regarded as a very cruel and barbarous act and one
can not even see it. In Doma, some of the nomads hire
people to kill